Shauna + Tim + 2 Bunnies

Monday, August 22, 2011

Pantry Re-Do

I'm here with a few of my organizational projects- look at for one giant project coming soon!! But for now, here's a little snidbit about how I reorganized our pantry. Oh how I wish I had a 'before' picture, but I don't! So you'll have to make do with this organized 'after:'

What I did first was to eliminate our spice rack that took up precious counter space in our tiny kitchen. I pulled about 8 frequently used spices out of it and tossed the rest. In addition to the spice rack we had, we also had a gazillion random bottles we'd bought for one recipe, along with a couple spice jars from Ikea I picked up to house some spices we started picking up on the regular in the Whole Foods bulk section- masala, turmeric, cumin, etc. So, I did a giant cleansing of the 100 or so spices we owned and brought that number down to about 20 or so. The spices used to be house on the lower left side of the cabinet, but I moved them for easier access, since they're the most frequently used item in the "pantry." During our next trip to Ikea, we plan to stock up on a lot more of the spice jars so that we have a uniform look.

Next, I lined up all our baking supplies on the left side of the "spice" row. This was pretty simple because I don't bake very often, so I only have a few supplies. Ditto on our snack section, on the bottom left hand side, where I keep any desserts we might have, along with nuts, chips, oatmeal, etc.

Last, I stacked all of our essential dinner/lunch supplies in the lower right hand side. Here, we have a ton of beans that we like to pick up from Costco periodically (vegans = tons of bean on hand!), along with a few other staples that we have on hand at any given time; mostly soups and grains that don't fit into our "other pantry:"

These jars on the counter are where we keep most of our food, as you can see! We always (or try to) have a large supply of whole grain pasta, brown rice, lentils, barley, cous cous, quinoa, etc, and of course, always a tiny jar of nutritional yeast.

Bonus trick: Using some leftover plywood from when I was installing some faux wainscoting in our game room, I "straightened" up my pile of boots.

This quick clean up was literally as simple as sticking some extra wood into my boots so keep them standing up straight. Keeps the boots looking good, and keeps my closet looking better than when all the boots were drooping all over themselves. Voila!